Hi Everyone! Recently I started making cross-stitch patterns. I’m cross-posting Judy the Utie-rus here, but you can find the other ones (some Pusheen, a Bearista Bear) on my other blog site supercutestuff.org. It takes a pretty long time to make one pattern, but it is pretty relaxing in a weird way! haha. So, what I’m posting here are PDF and PNG versions of the pattern. Feel free to download and scale them as you like. I have a number of different versions with the grid at different opacity levels so you can choose what works best for your own eyes. You can right-click (or control-click) on the PNG images to download, and just click on the links for the PDF files to get to those. If you decide to make the cross-stitch, let me know how it works out for you and/or if you have any tips for making it better. I hope you enjoy! :)

In the United States in the past week we have been shocked and devastated by public shootings. First in Oregon at Clackamas Town Center, then in Connecticut at an elementary school and then in Las Vegas at a hotel. Most people, myself included, are horrified at the violence. Naturally, we now all seem to be debating about how to prevent these senseless acts. Some people latch onto gun control, some people latch onto our violently oriented culture, and some people latch onto mental illness as an issue. I honestly don’t know that there are any answers or actions that society can make as a whole to prevent things like this happening in the future, but this bit of rant is not about answers exactly. What I want to talk about is what is NOT the answer.

What is NOT the answer is scapegoating any one group of people. From my perspective as a person living with mental illness, I am (of course) sensitive to people ranting about how the mentally ill should be locked up or about how all of the shooters must have been mentally ill. Honestly, we don’t know enough about the situations or people to comment. What I have to say time and time again is that statistics bear out the fact that mentally ill people are generally not violent and are, in fact, more likely to be the victims of violent crime than the perpetrators of violent crime. People with mental illness are often more of a threat to themselves than to anyone else. Even if all of the shooters turn out to be mentally ill, that does not mean that all people with mental illness are violent. We can note also that all of the shooters were male, but that doesn’t mean that all men are violent and that all men should be locked away from society or have their rights stripped.

It is distressing to me that so often the conversation will turn into attacks on mentally ill people aka “the crazies” and how to keep them away from “the rest of us.” There are literally millions (or more) people living with mental illness who never harm anyone. If someone is violent AND mentally ill, that does not mean they are violent BECAUSE they are mentally ill. They are violent, because they are violent. We should focus our energies on how to make the world a less violent one with people who are less violent, not perpetuate stereotypes and attack other humans who have done nothing wrong.

Here are some new pillows I’ve been working on. I’m going to be selling on consignment at In Other Words in Portland, Oregon. I’m pretty excited about it! The first one is Henry Miller Magic cat with red stripes. The second one is Judy the Utie(rus) with minis on the back. The third one is a pillow of Angelica Kauffman and Mary Moser having tea.

I made another Calculus fabric through spoonflower (http://www.spoonflower.com/fabric/1187406), because I was so excited about my first Calculus fabric. Well, the material arrived in the mail today! How exciting!!! I also got my design of balloons on orange chevrons, but I have to work on perfecting the chevrons and getting it how I like it. So fun to get fabric in the mail! :) Click the photos for a larger view. :)

It seems we can’t ever just get snow. Eventually we end up getting ice and ice rain and it makes a huge mess of things. If people only had to drive in the snow that would be one thing, but the ice is impossible. They actually have to close Continue Reading Where There’s Snow There’s Ice!…

Like this:

Okay, I know this isn’t exciting to many people, but it is pretty exciting around here when we get snow! We’ve had our first real storm of the Winter here in the Pacific Northwest and even down here in the Portland area Banana Belt, we have gotten almost Continue Reading We Have SNOW!!!…

I wanted to let you all know about my friend, Issa. Issa and I worked together in the computer labs at school for years and he is an awesome guy with a lot of ambition and talent. He’s been pursuing his music dreams and is about to hit it big! His music Continue Reading A New Superstar: ISSA…

It is always too soon when our beloved animals pass. This time it is the much-loved Fup who was the store cat at Powell’s technical bookstore. She was 19 years old and lived Continue Reading It Is Always Too Soon……